WASHINGTON—As Congress broke for midterm elections, the wireless industry won a few battles, but for the most part failed to get legislation it supported passed.
- It’s not clear how industry felt about anti-pretexting legislation. But pretexting bills died, getting bogged down in turf battles. Pretexting—impersonating someone else to obtain personal records—got the attention of policy-makers at all levels of government a few times this year following media reports that telecom customer call records were for sale on the Internet.
- While wireless carriers got liability protection for emergency alerts, Voice over Internet Protocol providers were not so lucky. Language to include VoIP liability protection when dealing with enhanced 911 calls was dropped from the port-security bill.
Also not included in the port-security bill was a provision for liability protection for telecom carriers participating in the warantless-wiretapping program.
- On the approved side, Congress included an anti-Internet gambling bill that will prohibit banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to Internet-gambling sites. Gambling has always been illegal over wireless devices in the United States—with the recent exception of in-casino use—but a handful of offshore wagering houses have deployed mobile applications for their bettors both here and abroad. The recent crackdown by U.S. legislators, though, has spooked many online sites into shuttering all their offerings for American consumers.
- One of the few appropriations bill to be completed before the end of the fiscal year was the one funding homeland security. Congress approved the $34.8 billion bill that includes the creation of a new Office of Emergency Communications inside the Department of Homeland Security to elevate the problem of public-safety interoperability within the Homeland-Security Department. Dropped from the Homeland-Security Appropriations bill was a mandate that radio-frequency identification tags be used as part of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.
- Finally, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin will have to wait until November to see if he is confirmed to another five-year term on the commission. His nomination is on hold. His term at the agency expired in June, but he can stay until Congress leaves in the fall of 2007. RCR
